You can see it, you can note it, you can sense it pretty much immediately. The moment where you’ve suddenly disengaged a previously engaged student. Usually it starts out innocently enough when you blurt out something like: “Take, for instance, the film Little Miss Sunshine...” and the student equally blurts out: “I LOOOOOOOOOVE that movie.” You now have two choices. Choice A: continue with the point of how much you can’t stand the movie or choice B: lie and say you love it, too, even though you don’t. Being honest and wanting to make the point – I continue with Choice A and then watch as the eyes glaze over, the smile fades, arms get crossed and...there you have it...total disengagement. I hate when that happens. But, sometimes, to make your point – it HAS to happen.
Here’s the wacky thing about films. You can either love them...or hate them...or like them. While someone else can either love them...or hate them...or like them. I’m reminded years ago of the film War Games where Matthew Broderick gets all up in the Ferris Buellerish world of nuclear war (okay, not really). My wife and I saw this film at the Seattle International Film Festival as part of the secret fest (it was just coming out the following week – so it really wasn’t much of a secret) and we enjoyed it.
That weekend I watched both “Sneak Previews” and “At the Movies” two similar movie critic shows and it made me laugh because Lyons and Medved (I think) LOVED the movie and all its elements and Ebert and Siskel HATED the movie and all its elements. Were they watching the same film?
So when I go off on a film in my screenwriting class – a film I might despise for whatever reason – I take the risk of pissing off a student who thinks that film is Citizen Kane just with more annoying characters. Now, I say to the students, pretty quickly as “Mr. White Guy With A Fro” disengages, that it’s okay to like and dislike films – as long as you have valid arguments to back them up. Just because I like something doesn’t mean that YOU have to like it and I’m not going to judge you poorly if you say your favorite film is Freddy Got Fingered (okay, maybe if you say that film is your favorite film because that film really REALLY is bad).
But where does my argument go from there? At what point does my trashing a beloved R rated well cast, academy award winning film become a learning lesson for my students as opposed to just me bitching about a film that they, obviously, think is WONDERFUL? It falls into the world of logic. Reality. World.
Films, and of course screenplays, by their very nature, are illogical. You have people in non realistic situations (usually), people who never go to the bathroom, sleep, take naps, scratch themselves or fart (usually), with music that swells around them and over them as if an orchestra is following them around from location to location (usually) and they follow some sort of bizarre Joseph Campbell hero journey structure where they make choices, face fears, struggle, fight, love, make-love, struggle some more, face death, climb up out of the pit of utter despair and kill something or someone or something metaphorical and accomplish their goal...or not (usually). We, in our day-to-day lives are logical in that we get up, eat food, travel somewhere, work, go to the bathroom, fart, scratch ourselves, earn a paycheck, make choices like “which tomato is fresher” and “paper or plastic” face the fear of unable to find the remote – find it (heavy sigh) and go to sleep (usually). No facing death. No huge decisions. No climbing out of a pit of despair (usually). Sometimes the biggest decision we face in the course of the day is whether or not you can spare the extra 9 minutes after pushing the snooze button the alarm – AND THAT’S AT 6 A.M.? The big decision is done and you’re not even fully awake!
Back to logic.
When you’re writing a screenplay whether it is in outer-space, inner-space, old west, modern times, love story, horror, etc. it has to adhere to the world that you, the writer, create. That world HAS to exist in some way shape or form with the rules and laws of the world it creates. In other words – you’re asking a reader to go into the world of the Hobbits. Great, Middle Earth, but Middle Earth has its class systems, its prejudices, its issues. To suddenly, at some point, have a Hobbit grow six feet tall and announce that he’s not hungry and doesn’t need a pipe would be in direct conflict with the world that you created. For some this might be no big deal...for others this would be heresy. And, yes, my brother still complains that there’s no Tom Bobbadill character in the Lord of the Rings.
Once those rules are in place and in motion – if those lines are blurred – much like Tom – it is up to the viewer to determine if it’s “okay” or “not okay” to continue to buy into the story. These are what I call “logic leaps.” How many leaps are you willing to take before you finally say: ENOUGH!!
Let me remind all you dear readers that I LOVE film. LOVE IT. I am fully willing to have a suspension of disbelief. Whether that’s a fish looking for his son, a robot in love, a woman meeting up with strangers to kill a witch, a man suffering from depression who meets his guardian angel, a boy in outer-space, a space alien who likes Reese’s Pieces, etc. I’m not Mr. dowdy-howdy here. I’m all for suspension of disbelief but...and it’s a BIG BUT...there are only so many leaps I’m asked to take and if those leaps completely undercut a character or important part of the story – then even worse.
Back to Little Miss Sunshine. This is a cute little film and I won’t recap the entire story here but I will note the leaps and you can determine if I’m completely out-of-whack or not. This is not about the actors (most of whom I love) who do a great job. Alan Arkin, who went to school with my mom, deservedly won the Oscar for his part. But back to the leaps.
Leap 1: Boy refuses to talk. Why is this a leap? Well, first, I’ve never ever EVER heard of someone – including a boy refusing to talk. Is it possible? Sure...anything is possible. And in this screwed up family why not. But asking me to buy into this – when I know full well that this is just a plot device to have him talk eventually makes me a little gun-shy to begin with. So I’ll give this a leap-factor of 5 (out of 10).
Leap 2: Family decides to travel en masse to the girl’s pageant. Okay, I guess I get this. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Figure someone would stay home and watch the house. Leap factor 4.
(now forgive me if I get some of these out order – it has been awhile)
Leap 3: Grandpa dies and they have to smuggle the body out of the hospital. In this day-and-age? Sigh. Leap factor 6.
Leap 4: While reading a magazine (according to my son and his girlfriend – picked up at the hospital) – there’s an EYE CHART in the magazine and, using the eye chart – the boy realizes he’s color blind and can’t become a pilot like he wants – causing him to freak out and speak! Yes, this is the forced scene that I was anticipating the moment I was told that the character refused to speak. Leap factor 10! This is unforgivable on a number of levels. First: How many magazines – even those at the doctor’s office – have eye charts in them? Second: Abigail Breslin’s character has large coke-bottle glasses as part of her character. Didn’t the family EVER take the brother to the eye doctor? EVER?
Leap 5: Staying at a local hotel the father finds out his mentor is, surprisingly, staying just a few miles away so he borrows someone’s moped and goes and visits his mentor. This one didn’t really bother me too much but, still, it’s forced conflict and just, again, is a nail in this script’s logic coffin. Leap factor 7.
Leap 6: This is the big one – on par – if not worse than Leap 4. We learn that the Steve Carrel character is depressed and suicidal because he recently broke up with his boyfriend. So on this trip through the Southwest, in the middle of nowhere, he runs into his ex-boyfriend at a gas station. REALLY!! If I was reading this script I would have tossed it across the room, picked it up, tossed it again. Then I would have burned it. Leap factor 100! HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?
Again, I’m a forgiving type of person and I could easily over look one or two or maybe even three...but when you give me, at least, 6 logic gaps and a couple of them are so egregious as #’s 4 and 6 – I just can’t live in the world of Little Miss Sunshine again. And the writers won the Academy Award for this. Please.
The above are what I call story logic leaps and don’t get me started (or maybe best to left to a future blog) on the logic leaps of The Dark Knight and Inglorious Basterds. I’m going to talk next of what I call character logic leaps.
Your script is filled with characters. They need to act like what you’ve created. If you create some hard-ass military man at some point you don’t want him sobbing in a corner sucking on his thumb (unless it makes logical sense). Too often films are filled with characters that are set up a certain way but then they do something that is so illogical that it completely undermines that character as they were created. Are these character logic problems worse than story logic problems? That’s open for debate. It depends on how important that particular character is to your story.
Here’s my example: Paul Thomas Anderson made a film entitled Magnolia about a bunch of lives that intersect in California. It was a very well made film with many characters all living their lives and going about their business. This film, like Sunshine was highly praised and a darling with the critics. But I had a problem with a character. Okay TWO characters.
Tom Cruise plays a very charismatic misogynistic jerk who is doing all-male seminars about “getting back to being a MAN!” These are highly popular and it is mentioned in the film that he is making a lot of money doing these seminars, writing books, etc. Who cares that he’s a huge douche-bag because he’s got the world by the balls and he’s squeezing. He’s a “tough guy” that takes no guff from anyone. Did I say he’s really popular and been doing these seminars for a while? Let me remind you of that.
In one scene, after a particularly successful seminar, he agrees to do an on-camera interview with a very attractive reporter. Of course he saunters around like a peacock and he’s all manly manliness etc. Well, the reporter starts asking him questions and brings up the fact that his mother, I think, died of a suicide when he was young. Tom Cruise FREAKS OUT! This guy, who, again, HAS BEEN DOING THIS FOR MONTHS – IF NOT YEARS, completely comes unglued. He’s a smart guy – he MUST have known this would have come out at SOME POINT and he should have a pat answer for it. And how it hadn’t come out already is a logic leap of vast proportions anyway. He gets in her face, he threatens her, he internalizes, he goes psychotic – whatever you want to say – he pretty much does it in this scene – ALL WHILE BEING FILMED. This, of course, is the downfall of his career. But it makes no logical sense to the character and it completely undermines the character and what we’ve already learned about him. Once the curtain is pulled away there’s no character there anymore and maybe that’s PTA’s point but I don’t think so. How would I have written the scene? She asks him the question. He loses his smile. He says a pat answer to her – she challenges – he gives the pat answer again and says: “Look, this interview is over.” And walks out. After that he goes into his trailer/hotel room/bedroom – wherever he’s at and takes it out on the RCA 26” TV or something. That’s logical. Having him completely come unglued for something he knew had been coming all along made me immediately knock a star off this film.
The second character – it’s the same sort of thing. An old, dying of cancer, game show host is being put out to pasture. He has no family, pretty much, to speak of. All he has is this job he’s been doing for the past 40 years. A live game show where kids answer questions and win prizes. He doesn’t want to be pushed out – he knows the network doesn’t want him – he’s feeling very frustrated.
Another live show starts and the kids are all ready but one kid is being picked on by the others. Finally little Billy has to pee and pee bad and they come back from commercial and the host, the old guy, WHO’S BEEN DOING THIS LIVE SHOW WITH KIDS FOR 40 YEARS, doesn’t know what to do when the kid pees his pants. I mean, C’MON! He should be running into this problem every two weeks! It’s live TV, it’s KIDS! He should have gone right into a standby mode – having faced this before – and known what to say and how to say it and switch to another camera, take another commercial break, etc. But he doesn’t know what to do! Please. Do I care about this character anymore? No. Because he’s an idiot. Or how he’s been written, he’s an idiot.
The "Pee" Kid
Finally – I recently watched the film The Campaign and this has what I now call the DVD Logic Leap. What this simply means is that the filmmakers take a huge/gigantic/what the hell? logic leap for no reason other than, I assume, to flesh out the entire scene on the “unrated DVD” version. The film is 85 minutes long! You couldn’t add the three or four minutes to the film to make sure that there isn’t this huge head-scratcher right in the middle of the 2nd Act? I guess not.
To recap...The Campaign is a very silly, don’t take seriously, fluffy, completely absurd film. But...even if it IS all those – it has to create a real/logical world that makes some sense. Or you might as well have unicorns come out of the ground and fight mutant butterflies for the rights to the Yoplait yogurt active yeast at the local Safeway.
As this story of two politicians gets more and more heated there’s a scene where, SOMEHOW, one of the candidates got the other candidate’s SON to call him Dad. We, the audience, have no idea how this came about – because it’s never explained. It’s just, well, done. Leaving SUCH a gaping hole in the story that I was wondering what happened. But it goes to what I call the “unrated DVD” version reason. I know that this complete scene will show up in THAT version that runs 104 minutes and not 85 minutes. But who makes these choices? I hope it’s not the director...who should know better.
More on logic leaps later. Thank you for listening (reading).
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